85% of Firefox users use add-ons; Chrome users, just 33%

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At long last, Mozilla has managed to calculate how many Firefox users have at least one add-on installed: 85%. It gets better, though: the average Firefox user has no less than 5 add-ons installed — but considering over 2.5 billion add-ons have been downloaded in the last 5 years, that’s not all that surprising. In total, 580 million add-ons are used every day by the Firefox user base.

On the flip side, over in Googleland, only one third — 33% — of Chrome users have an add-on (extension) installed. The most telling statistic, though, is that Google has only served 70 million extensions and themes — a puny fraction of the 2.5 billion dished up by Mozilla. It’s worth noting that these Chrome statistics are six months old — but given how Chrome automatically updates, and how it doesn’t suffer from the same add-on compatibility issues as Firefox, it’s safe to assume that the percentage is still around 33% today. The total number of downloads will have climbed significantly — but it’s unlikely to be much over 100 million.

Now that you have the straight-laced and objective figures, it’s time for speculation. Why are Firefox users three times as likely to use add-ons? There are two serious omissions from Chrome’s extension line-up — Video DownloadHelper and DownThemAll — but surely that can’t account for such a huge disparity. It is more likely to be an ideological difference. Chrome users don’t use Chrome for the extensions — they use it for its spartan looks and brutal speed. Firefox users, on the other hand, are surfers who couldn’t imagine experiencing the interwebs without their favorite add-ons.

Google’s massive marketing push in the last year has focused almost exclusively on speediness. The resulting shift from Firefox or Internet Explorer to Chrome will be from users looking for a faster web, not extensions or other creature comforts. In other words, despite massive performance gains over the last year, Firefox is still all about add-ons — and Chrome is all about speed.

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Chrome extensions suck almost as bad as IE add-ons. Integration on FF is so much more “polished” than the others.

For the record.. i’m not American but chose the word “suck” as it just felt appropriate.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

There is that! Firefox add-ons do feel more native than Chrome extensions — and that’s probably because Firefox was built from the ground up to support extensions.

In keeping with the pseudo-American tone… Firefox’s add-on framework is awesome.

Matthew Emirzian

I’m willing to bet a Firefox user with some good addons is more productive (aka gets stuff done faster) than a Chrome user with none. Not to mention Firefox addons can do things that are improbable or impossible in Chrome.

Anonymous

Such as what? There’s nothing I can’t do quicker or more efficiently in Chrome as opposed to the bloat that’s become FF.

Anonymous

Not sure I follow the reasoning in this article. The reason I noticed FF running slow was because of the many ads downloaded from third party sites by the web page I was accessing. I noticed a significant speedup after installing ADBlocker in FF. IE suffered from the same slowdown, but I gave up on IE about two years ago.

Anonymous

Not sure I follow the reasoning in this article. The reason I noticed FF running slow was because of the many ads downloaded from third party sites by the web page I was accessing. I noticed a significant speedup after installing ADBlocker in FF. IE suffered from the same slowdown, but I gave up on IE about two years ago.

http://twitter.com/iamdamnsam Sam Simpson

Well the main purpose of a browser is to “browse websites”. Chrome does it extremely well out of the box. I would speculate a new Chrome use is so over joyed by the better performance over their other browser they haven’t found a need to install an extension?

I have Chrome and Firefox always open on my screens for work (web developer) and many extensions/add-ons on both. I could get by with none installed just as easy, though I use Chrome more than Firefox.

http://dannyboyt.myopenid.com/ Dan

Fx is still a pain to use in netbooks, which is why I only have three extensions installed. Chrome, OTOH, is still brutally fast on such low powered PCs. I have 7 extensions for Chrome at the moment. I don’t know about “native-ness” but I don’t have any problem using Chrome extensions as if it were part of the browser. It’s all subjective anyway.

Fx should really do something about its speed and responsiveness. The last time Fx felt light was when it was still Mozilla Phoenix. But even back then it could barely run in Win98 boxes with modest RAM.

Anonymous

my biggest issue with Chrome is that it doesn’t have an easily configurable option for a proxy. I use toggleproxy on Firefox and it has become something I cant live without.

http://profiles.google.com/vascofalves Vasco Alves

AdBlock doesn’t work as well on Chrome either. I wonder if that has anything to do with its maker being an advertising company…

Anonymous

From my perspective, chrome initial decision to not allow add-ons is probably whats keeping the numbers so low. I asume that most casual users are unaware that they can use add-ons for chrome now.

I myself only used firefox because of this. But even though I only had two add-ons firefox would freeze on me on almost every other web page I would open. So when I saw that I could use adblock for chrome, that’s when I switched over.

Of course now chrome hangs on me occasionally too, but no where near as badly as Firefox was.

http://www.facebook.com/mtwhitesell Michael Whitesell

Chrome or Firefox, I can’t see myself browsing the web with an adblock add-on/extension.

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